This post was originally going to be part of a series exploring the topic, but if I take that approach I’ll probably never actually make time to write each post in the series, so here’s an omnibus “I need to think about this stuff and writing a blog post is the best way to formalize my thinking.”

We’ve all been trying to figure out generative AI since ChatGPT was launched almost 1 year ago. (yes, it’s been less than a year since ChatGPT was originally launched on Nov. 30, 2022. yes, it feels so, so much longer than that.) Much of my work over the last year has involved conversations with team members and university leadership about the nature and implications of generative AI tools, most prominently ChatGPT.

Over that almost-year, the nature of the questions and conversations has shifted from “OMG THIS IS THE END OF UNIVERSITIES!!!” to “yikes - how do we adapt courses and assessment in response to this?” and, occasionally, “cool! how can I use that to design my course” and even “awesome! maybe I can use this to grade that stack of assignments!”

I’ve been about as anti-generative-AI as they come. I understand (at a basic level) how large language models work ¹²³, the kinds of things they can rationally be expected to be able to do, and the kinds of things they logically can’t do. LLMs work by using incredibly sophisticated math to predict which words are most likely to be used in response to a given word. The breakthrough happened when the size of the database used by the LLM hit some kind of critical mass - it was big enough to be able to produce human-sounding responses. ChatGPT 3 used a huge chunk of the publicly-visible WWW as of 2021. In November 2023, ChatGPT 4 (ChatGPT Turbo) increased the scale of the model dramatically, refreshing to April, 2023.

And there are some serious ethical concerns about these giant LLM applications, namely their reliance on people to filter out the worst of the internet before the content is used to generate the model⁴. And, of course, the incredible environmental impact - using the electricity of a small country, draining aquifers and water sources⁵.

I also get that as the incredible statistical modelling that powers LLMs gets more sophisticated, coupled with the data in the model growing both in size and complexity, there will come a time when its output appears robust enough for that not to matter much. It will pass the Turing Test⁶. It already has. That’s a scary proposition, for a number of reasons:

1. we don’t know what’s in the LLM, where it came from, how it was processed, what’s been excluded (by whom?), what’s been left in, etc…
2. we don’t know what the generative-AI software is doing with the data in the LLM
3. even the LLM developers can’t tell you exactly how a given response was generated. there is a lot of hand-waving. There is (currently) no way to meaningfully and fully instrospect how a response was generated, in order to determine bias or gaps.
4. we don’t know for sure what happens to the text, data, files that we feed into the LLM as prompts. Are they archived for use in refining the LLM itself? For a separate application? Not knowing what happens to input data means that these tools aren’t appropriate for use with student data, research data, or other forms of confidential or restricted data.

and

Given that generative AI isn’t going to go away, and that chat-based tools such as ChatGPT have made these tools incredibly easy to use by anyone with access to a web browser, I need to spend some quality time with these tools so that I can have (and lead) informed conversations that will help to shape policy, processes, platforms, and support at my university⁷. So, I need to get over my initial “ew - this can’t possibly do what people are saying it does” and “this just isn’t AI” and “what a misuse of resources” and “silicon valley tech-bro culture is thriving on this so we shouldn’t give it oxygen” reactions. It’s not going away. People across our (and every other) university are actively using this stuff. And we need to actually use this stuff in order to have meaningful conversations about it. Students are using it in projects - a grad student has incorporated a ChatGPT-powered virtual “curator” inside a video game he’s building for an assignment in an architecture course. Instructors are using it - including building ChatGPT-powered course design tools.

So. This post will contain some samples of generative-AI-produced content. I’m going to commit to always flagging where content is AI-generated, as demonstrated by this AI-generated statement:

Hopefully that works via RSS as well.

I’ve been trying out ChatGPT 3.5 for most of the last year, using the freely-available version. That exploration informed much of my initial response to generative AI: It’s impressive as hell, but writes mediocre content that will barely pass what’s required at a university level. I decided that I needed to spend some time using the latest and greatest version of ChatGPT - the recently-released ChatGPT 4, integrated with DALL-E (for generating images), and with Bing for accessing web pages. I ponied up for a Chat GPT Plus account ($25.18 CDN/month, on my own credit card and using a non-institutional email address because I’m going a bit rogue by not going through the official Software Acquisition process). In the week since having access to ChatGPT 4, I’ve tried many of the added features, including creating a couple of “GPT” bots with specialized content and personae, and generating images as part of the prompt discussions.

Course design

My initial reaction when setting up my first GPT bot - one based on my dissertation - was that it’s extremely easy to create and configure. It’s all done via conversation with a bot-creating bot. It asks some questions, you can have a conversation with it, and then I uploaded the PDF of my dissertation and asked it to use the document and the “Teaching Game” framework as the basis of responses, providing consultation for instructors who are designing courses. I didn’t expect much. I asked it to design a course that I’m currently co-teaching this semester (a work-integrated-learning graduate level architecture studio with a focus on designing innovative learning spaces, using my dissertation’s framework as a starting point and using video game engines to prototype and playtest the spaces).

“Design a master’s level architecture studio course, with a focus on designing new and innovative learning spaces using the video game engine Unreal Engine 5.” and it responded:

Now, that’s different from the course as we’re teaching it - but it would actually be a pretty decent course design to start with. Note that it adds some apparent source references, like “【8†source】”. That looked promising, but the references don’t seem to point to anything. Not sure what’s going on there.

I then asked it to develop a rubric that could be used for each of the assignments it described.

Again, that’s actually a good start. And, again, I have no idea how it came up with the response. It’s probably seen a bunch of rubrics and grading criteria in its LLM dataset. Where did they come from? Are they good? Are they relevant to this prompt? etc.

And, again, these tools are already working at a level that provides meaningful assistance in designing courses - see the Smartie.dev tool that takes this to the next level.

Feedback on assignments

Instructors have been asking if-and-how they can use ChatGPT to provide feedback and even grades for student assignments. My response has consistently been “that’s not an appropriate use of generative AI, and the software will only be generating a series of words based on the prompt - without actually analyzing or understanding the document.” On top of “and you don’t have the right to upload content written by students to any third-party application where you don’t know exactly how that content will be used, that intellectual property will be respected, and that privacy will be respected.” Which, despite statements on websites, we just don’t have that information at a level that’s needed to authorize these tools for this kind of thing. Assuming the feedback would be meaningful in the first place (see initial response about just stringing words together without understanding what’s going on).

But - let’s see what kind of “feedback” could be created by ChatGPT 4. Again, knowing what I know of LLMs and ChatGPT, it can’t possibly provide actual feedback. It can do its word-association thing based on the input and prompts. What would that look like? I uploaded a PDF of a paper I wrote for one of the courses in my PhD program. I got an “A”, and I asked ChatGPT 4 to “Use what you know of the Teaching Game Framework to provide feedback on the document I uploaded at the beginning of this thread (“HRI Theme Study”). Apply an appropriate rubric, and assign a letter grade.”

A-. Oof. But - to my horror - the feedback would actually be useful. I have no idea how it generated the letter grades. Is this word-association based on what it’s seen? I don’t believe it’s actually “grading” the assignment. It can’t do that. It’s just an LLM with a software wrapper. So, how do the letters get assigned? That it even understands what letter grades are, and seemed to apply them somewhat appropriately, is impressive. I can definitely see instructors using this as a starting point (and hopefully just as starting point) in providing feedback. Also, this will at some point be integrated into other software - I’d be shocked if the LMS didn’t start to have stuff like this baked in.

BUT. Without more control of and documentation about how the LLM works and how it stores/uses/deletes content, this is not an ethical way to manage student-created content. That’s a HUGE problem. You know, on top of the fact that the LLM can’t actually understand the document that it’s being asked to generate feedback-words for. You might be able to use a standalone, self-managed LLM like Meta’s Llama to do this - at least you’d know the content wasn’t being stored/used by a third party - but that doesn’t get past the “I don’t think it’s creating text that is genuine feedback on anything” problem.

Creativity

I wanted to see how “creative” the responses could be, so I asked it to generate an image that combines a scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey” and one from “The Shining”. Its initial response was:

I asked it to create an image without using any copyrighted sources, and it came up with:

🤖 - AI-generated content, via ChatGPT 4 and DALL-E

If I’d created the image myself, there would be no doubt that it was creative. It captures the vibes of both 2001 and The Shining (and maybe Alien?). It’s actually a good, interesting, dare I say “creative” image. Without being able to introspect how the response was generated, I have no idea if it’s just building on an image it found somewhere, or if it was created from a set of related images, or if it was created as something new. But, that’s also how our brains work - we can’t provide that level of instrospction to describe our own thoughts and creations.

I asked it to create a design for a bicycle jersey, for the “pain train” cycling group I try-and-fail to keep up with. It came up with several different versions, including this one:

🤖 - AI-generated content, via ChatGPT 4 and DALL-E

I mean. I’d buy that. I couldn’t convince it to create just the artwork so that it could be uploaded to a custom jersey website. But it’s a start.

Coaching and/or “thinking out loud” tool

I created a second GPT bot, and asked it to be a trusted colleague at a post-secondary institution’s centre for teaching and learning, and to conversationally discuss topics related to leadership. I was thinking it might be useful, in the way programmers use a rubber duck to talk through their work to help formalize their thinking.

Something I’ve been working on is my ability to actively listen - with a focus of being able to speak up and/or intervene in the moment. Many times, I haven’t realized that was needed until it was too late. So I asked my “Coach” bot:

“How can I get better about seeing issues in the moment and in responding to them right away? Often, I’ll miss a comment during a meeting and then it’s too late.”

I mean. Sure, that’s all obvious stuff, and it only know about it because it’s seen words in similar orders on web pages about similar questions. But still, that’s a useful response, and something I’d have been happy with if a human leadership coach had suggested these. Although, a human leadership coach would have led me to come up with these suggestions on my own, through careful questioning and probing - GPT just blurted out the answer without guiding me to develop it myself. That feels like a shortcut that gets to the same visible output (the suggestions) without me having done the real internal and invisible work.

I’ve asked it a few other questions, and it’s been giving surprisingly useful responses that I can see being useful. But, again, without having done the work, I don’t know if it’s that useful for developing my own practice…

My son is in a post-secondary program at another institution, studying a highly technical discipline. I’ve asked him if he uses ChatGPT or other generative AI tools. His response is that he’s tried it but doesn’t use them because then he wouldn’t be learning anything. He has peers that use ChatGPT and Copilot to complete assignments. These peers get straight As on their assignments, but they don’t understand what they’re doing, and he wants to make sure he understands. Good answer. Just what ChatGPT would have said…

wrapping this thing up

OK. This turned into a bit of an epic brain-dump post, and I left out a bunch of stuff that I’d meant to include. I apologize to anyone who stuck with it this long.

I honestly don’t know what to do with this. I think it was important for me to experiment with the current best-in-class generative AI tools, and to have the surreal experience of “it looks like it knows what it’s talking about, despite the fact that it literally doesn’t-and-can’t understand what I’m asking it or what it’s saying in response, at least how we understand understanding.”

I think the Turing Test has been a bit of a red herring. We could move the goalposts somewhat, but at the core of the Turing Test is the belief that if you can’t tell if something is computer-generated or human-generated, if it has the appearance of being the product of intelligence, then it is. I think that doesn’t capture the whole thing, but it does capture the experience of it. Combined with our tendency to ascribe intelligence and emotion to things that can’t have either - from talking to ELIZA through having conversations with ChatGPT - the feeling of using these things is that there “something there” there. And that feeling is only going to get stronger as the tools get better, as the models get better, as the interfaces get better, as they get integrated into other tools, as we start to take them for granted.

Update: and a timely post from Allison Green, about the use of ChatGPT in the workplace.

See Also

• Does This Android Dream of Electric Sheep?
• ChatGPT Designs a University Learning Space Design Evaluation Plan
• ChatGPT Writes a Dissertation
• An ethnographic interview with an AI